Aeva Technologies - Q3 2024

Executive Summary

• Q3 revenue was $2.25M, up sharply versus $0.81M in Q3 2023 and above Q2’s $2.01M; GAAP EPS improved to $(0.70) from $(0.75) YoY and $(0.82) QoQ, with non-GAAP EPS at $(0.55).
• Strategic wins and execution milestones: The Indoor Lab multi-year production program for security deployments at JFK and SFO; a major European OEM selected Aeva’s 4D LiDAR for automated vehicle validation; Torc/Daimler Truck validated fully driverless highway operations; and Aeva pulled forward first Atlas shipments by ~two quarters to meet demand.
• Liquidity remained strong with $134.8M cash/marketable securities and $125M available facility; gross cash used fell to $26.4M in Q3 from $29.9M in Q2 and $32.6M in Q1, improving cash burn trajectory.
• No formal revenue/OpEx guidance was provided; management focused on execution toward Daimler Truck SOP in 2026 and continued RFQ progress with passenger OEMs.
• Potential near-term sentiment catalysts include the security production ramp (management referenced ~$50M cumulative revenue opportunity over 2–3 years) and driverless validation at 65 mph with Daimler/Torc, reinforcing Aeva’s FMCW/4D LiDAR differentiation.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Industrial/security production win: The Indoor Lab chose Atlas 4D LiDAR for deployments at major U.S. airports and mass transit; shipments began in Q3 to support planned rollouts and multiyear volumes.
• Automotive milestones: Torc/Daimler Truck validated fully driverless operations at highway speeds (65 mph), a key step toward commercialization and Daimler’s autonomous truck market entry in 2027; Aeva remains exclusive long/ultra-long range LiDAR supplier, SOP on track for 2026.
• Product execution: Aeva pulled forward Atlas first shipments by ~six months to meet demand and is implementing plans to scale production for next year; CEO: “We made the strategic decision and executed on pulling forward first shipments of Atlas to the third quarter to meet more of our strong demand”.

What Went Wrong

• Continued losses: GAAP operating loss of $37.9M (vs $35.5M YoY) and gross loss of $0.721M reflect early-stage scale and cost of revenue exceeding revenue; non-GAAP operating loss was $31.4M.
• Heavy stock-based compensation: Q3 SBC totaled $6.5M across functions, contributing to non-GAAP adjustments and ongoing loss profile.
• Execution risk in pipeline conversion: Management reiterated forward-looking uncertainties (testing/validation, definitive deployment agreements, revenue recognition) across programs and RFQs.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day. My name is Chloe, and I will be your conference facilitator. I would like to welcome everyone to the Aeva Technologies' Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. During the opening remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Following the opening remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded and simultaneously webcast. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrew Fung, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Andrew, please go ahead.

Andrew Fung (Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development)

Thank you, and welcome everyone to Aeva's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining on the call today are Soroush Salehian, Aeva's Co-Founder and CEO, and Saurabh Sinha, Aeva's CFO. Ahead of this call, we issued our third quarter 2024 press release and presentation, which we will refer to today and can be found on our investor relations website at investors.aeva.com. Please note that on this call, we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations.

For further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-Q and Form 10-K. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Aeva's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, or in isolation from GAAP results. The webcast replay of this call will be available on our company website under the investor relations link, and with that, let me turn the call over to Soroush.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. Aeva and Q3 continue to gain momentum across multiple fronts as more customer programs and industries look to adopt Aeva's unique 4D LiDAR technology to enable next-generation solutions. From new production awards to key milestones achieved towards production with existing partners and progress on securing additional wins, Aeva achieved major accomplishments this quarter, and I'm excited to highlight a few of them. First, we secured a major industrial production win for security applications with The Indoor Lab in a multi-year supply agreement with the opportunity to deploy Aeva 4D LiDAR at multiple large locations across the U.S., starting with JFK and SFO airports, followed by plans to grow additional deployments on other applications. This is an exciting expansion for Aeva that offers meaningful revenue potential and builds on our first win in security earlier this year.

In automotive, our production partners, Torc and Daimler Truck, achieved an important milestone towards safe and scalable commercialization with the successful validation of fully driverless operation at highway speeds. Of course, Torc's autonomous trucks are equipped with Aeva 4D LiDAR as the exclusive long and ultra-long-range LiDAR supplier. It is incredibly rewarding to be a part of such tangible progress towards bringing Daimler Truck's autonomous truck program to production. Aeva was also selected for a major European passenger OEM's automated vehicle validation program because of our FMCW advantages like direct velocity measurement, which will be used to help validate the OEM's next-generation vehicle automation systems. Lastly, Aeva remains on track with multiple RFQs for passenger vehicle production programs. In particular, we continued to advance further towards the finalization of the RFQ for a global top 10 passenger OEM's production program.

Let's now discuss in more detail our recent business developments. We are excited to be awarded a multi-year production supply agreement with The Indoor Lab. With over 15 years of experience, the company is a leader in AI-powered analytic solutions used to improve safety, security, and operational efficiency at major U.S. airports, mass transit, agriculture, and smart infrastructure. This production win represents a major expansion in security applications for Aeva and is also our first industrial production win for Atlas, our next-generation 4D LiDAR designed for mass production. Under the agreement, Atlas sensors will be integrated into The Indoor Lab's LiDAR Overwatch Perception Platform and enable the Enterprise Analytics Suite for critical infrastructure to perform around-the-clock AI-powered analytics and to monitor and manage indoor and outdoor environments.

The Indoor Lab is transitioning to Aeva 4D LiDAR for production deployments in order to leverage our superior capability such as direct velocity measurements and immunity to interference, but also importantly, because of our product scalability and the maturity of our Atlas product. Our first installations are at some of the largest and busiest airports in the U.S., starting with a new terminal at JFK in New York and multiple terminals at San Francisco International Airport. In addition, The Indoor Lab is planning to expand deployment opportunities of 4D LiDAR to other applications at scale for other airports, as well as mass transit, agriculture, and smart infrastructure applications across the United States.

As we deliver on the initial deployments, we expect to scale our supply to significant volumes to support the deployments and other industrial security applications, resulting in estimated revenue opportunity in the multiple tens of millions of dollars over the next two to three years. We have already begun shipments to The Indoor Lab last month and plan to scale volumes in 2025. Moving now to the latest on the Daimler Truck production program. Torc Robotics, Daimler Truck's subsidiary that is developing the OEM's autonomous driving technology, achieved a significant step towards a safe and scalable commercialization of autonomous trucks. In a comprehensive validation milestone, Torc Robotics trucks equipped with Aeva 4D LiDAR with 360-degree field-of-view coverage successfully completed fully driverless runs at highway speeds of 65 miles per hour.

This is a major accomplishment that clearly illustrates the tremendous progress and dedication Daimler Truck and Torc Robotics and partners are making to commercialize autonomous trucks on the U.S. highways by 2027. As the exclusive long-range and ultra-long-range LiDAR supplier for Daimler Truck's autonomous truck production program, multiple Aeva 4D LiDARs are being integrated into each truck for operation with Torc Robotics's Virtual Driver technology to enable highway speed autonomy starting with the Freightliner Cascadia platform. We remain on track with our startup production in 2026 to support Daimler Truck's planned market entry by 2027. In passenger vehicle, Aeva was selected for a major European passenger OEM's automated vehicle validation program. In collaboration with a leading simulation and validation technology provider, Aeva 4D LiDAR will gather ground truth data, which will serve as the benchmark for validating its next-generation vehicle automation systems, including sensing, perception, decision-making, and control systems.

The OEM's decision to use Aeva 4D LiDAR for this project is another example of the growing interest to leverage FMCW technology due to its ability to natively provide the additional dimension of instant velocity data, along with other advantages that are missing in conventional LiDAR sensors. We look forward to supporting the validation work and providing the OEM real-world experience with the differentiated capabilities of Aeva 4D LiDAR. Now, moving on to additional opportunities that we are engaged on. We are highly encouraged by the growing interest in our unique FMCW technology, and Q3 made strong progress on multiple automotive RFQs and engagements with leading OEMs.

In particular, with a global top 10 passenger OEM that we have discussed over the course of this year, we have advanced through multiple phases of their RFQ now, having worked jointly on spec alignment on thousands of technical requirements and passing extensive manufacturer and quality audits to be their potential tier-one supplier. Aeva has been down-selected to the final stage of the RFQ and will remain in close collaboration with OEM across their technical and commercial teams as they work through the finalization of the RFQ for the production program. To support our ongoing engagements and growing number of production wins, such as with The Indoor Lab, I am pleased to share that we have made the strategic decision and superb execution to pull forward the first shipments of Atlas by almost six months to this quarter.

This was a massive team effort across the Aeva organization that meaningfully changes our ability to support recent production wins, pull forward scaling of our Atlas deliveries, and capitalize on additional interest for our unique technology. Atlas is our production intent product that was designed from the ground up to be automotive-grade and scalable to mass volume. Based on our engagements, customers are increasingly looking for solutions that can be deployed at significantly greater scale than today's solutions. By accelerating the availability of Atlas, we believe this further positions Aeva to be in a market-leading position to not only deliver on our recent production wins, but continue to convert additional opportunities to production wins. With that, let me turn the call over to Saurabh to discuss the financials.

Thanks, Soroush, and good afternoon, everyone. Now, let's review our Q3 financial results.

Revenue in Q3 was $2.3 million, representing scaling of our sensor shipments to automotive and industrial customers, as well as our Daimler Truck program. In line with our expectations, our non-GAAP operating loss was $31.4 million for the quarter. Gross cash used was $26.4 million in the third quarter, which is defined as operating cash used of $25.9 million and capital expenditure of $0.5 million. Aeva's liquidity totaled $259.8 million at the end of Q3, comprised of $134.8 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and $125 million of available undrawn equity facility. We believe this places Aeva in a strong position to support our current production partners for their SOP launches, as well as securing additional production program wins that our team is engaged on. As Saurabh shared, Aeva continues to see growing interest for our unique 4D LiDAR.

We are focused on meeting this increasing demand and securing additional production wins. Now, I would like to turn it back to Soroush for closing remarks.

Thank you, Saurabh. Over the course of 2024, Aeva has seen a sharp uptick in our commercial momentum, starting with the Daimler Truck production award announced at the beginning of this year to more recently our major expansion into security applications with multiple wins. We are converting more of our engagements to production wins, as well as converting the ongoing programs to growing product shipments and revenues. I would like to thank the Aeva team for delivering these wonderful achievements. Looking ahead, we see opportunity to further build on our growing momentum and our focus on executing on the multiple passenger RFQs and engagements such as the global top 10 passenger OEM that we spoke about, as well as responding to the growing interest for our perception solutions in industrial automation, security, and other applications.

With an expanding list of industries looking to leverage FMCW advantages for automation and perception solutions, Aeva is in a strong position to drive the adoption of 4D LiDAR in automotive, industrial, security, and beyond. With that, we will now open the line up for questions.

Operator (participant)

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. And once more, for your questions, that is star and one. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question so there is time for everyone to ask their question. And we'll move first to Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director, Head of Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization Research)

Thanks so much. Now that you've got a couple of wins on the security side and with the ground truthing, can you talk a little bit about what's going on with the potential customers in those areas? How many, or just giving a sense of growth in the number of customers and the scope of that opportunity over the next 12 to 24 months for shipments?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah. Hi, Colin. Happy to ask that. This is Soroush. So obviously, as you've seen now over the past number of quarters, we have continued to really build up and capitalize on the momentum that we've seen in the market. Started off the year, of course, with the major production win with Daimler Truck. We have since executed on all the milestones that we had set out for us as a company and the market with customers, as well as actually pulling forward the product with Atlas now by nearly six months, which was, I think, a big deal with the company and across the organization to get this scale really in response to the growing demand. So to answer your question, with obviously now this additional production win, industrial security with The Indoor Lab, we're really excited about this. It's a major opportunity for us with the industrial production win.

Indoor Lab is a leader in the space around LiDAR-based AI analytics across applications at airports, smart infrastructure, and other large venues. This is a multi-year production supply deal we have. We're starting first with deployments across airports in the U.S., starting with JFK, as well as in San Francisco Airport, which we're excited about, and over time, we're going to expand this to additional locations over time. We see now this plus the national security organization win that we had earlier is a significant opportunity. With the Indoor Lab, as well as these other industrial security applications, to get to the bottom of your question, we estimate the revenue potential here to be approximately up to about $50 million in the next few years. This is something that obviously we see as the first opportunity.

And over time, as The Indoor Lab and other applications continue to grow their platforms and the deployments with new sites, we see the revenue potential today could grow over time. So in a nutshell, we're really excited about the progress we've made. It's not just in automotive, which we're really working well and progressing well, but also industrial and other applications as well.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director, Head of Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization Research)

Excellent. And then as you work towards our production with Torc, can you talk about the remaining key manufacturing hurdles that you guys are looking at and will be able to talk about with the public markets over the next couple of years?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, sure. So far, we have been really well on track and really well aligned with Daimler Truck and Torc, our partners for production here. We have hit all the milestones, everything we've been planning on with Daimler Truck and Torc towards their SOP milestones. And importantly, Torc and Daimler also have been continuing hitting their milestones, right? So with what we've seen and talked about, and Torc made a release about in the past few days, this validation of their driverless operations at highway speeds without a driver in the cab is a critical milestone, not just for Torc and Daimler Truck, but also for the industry. And this is further confidence building towards the timeline of our SOP, which obviously is in 2026, but also Torc and Daimler Truck's market entry in 2027, which, by the way, they have reiterated even as of the past few days.

So what's going on from here from now on? First of all, this year, at this point, we have now continued to scale on sensor shipments to Daimler Truck and Torc Robotics. We've actually completed all of the sensor shipments deliveries that we needed to do for our Aeries II platform with Daimler Truck and Torc Robotics this year on time or ahead of time a little bit. And we're now, of course, focused on deliveries with Atlas into next year. So that's kind of where the key focus is. And the key milestone is going to be the validation for the rest of the Torc Robotics fleets as they scale into next year, as well as some of our automotive qualifications and making sure that we bring up the scaling production line for our Atlas up to the levels that needed for mass SOP throughout next year.

So that's kind of the focus that we see in the next number of quarters ahead of us. But overall, we're really progressing well. We're on track. And we actually, because we've been able to pull forward now this Atlas deliveries, we are also obviously using that to capitalize on our momentum in other programs in automotive, including other passenger vehicle OEMs.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director, Head of Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization Research)

Thanks so much, guys.

Operator (participant)

And once more for your questions, that is star and one. We'll pause just another moment to allow questions to queue. And we do have another question. We'll move next to Suji Desilva with Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Suji Desilva (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, Saurabh. Hi, Soroush. Congrats on the progress here. Question on the tier-one OEM win that you have here. Just can you give us an update on the progress there and the remaining milestones for that global tier-one program? It sounds like it's coming close to a decision point or a volume ramp. Any color there would be helpful.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, Suji, happy to answer that. So obviously, we have been talking about our traction in the passenger car vehicle space in the past couple of quarters. Following our production with Daimler Truck, we have seen an uptick in interest for Aeva and for FMCW technology with the passenger vehicle and automotive market. And I think with our ability to actually pull forward our Atlas deployments and really hitting all the milestones for our ISO audits and certifications, we have continued over the course of this year across our engagements with multiple top passenger vehicle OEMs. Specifically for the top 10 OEM that I think you're referring to, over the course of this year, we have worked extensively with this OEM, and we continue to do so, and we're on track on that.

In a little bit more context, we have been obviously working from evaluation of the technology earlier in the year throughout really going through all the extensive testing together with this top 10 OEM. We have completed and passed all the critical manufacturing quality audits that helps us to build maturity as a tier-one supplier and gotten the approvals for that, leading to our ability to manufacture for them. We have jointly also worked together through the technical teams, aligning on all the requirements. Thousands of technical requirements have been aligned in the past number of months and very close engagement there that we have done. And then more recently, we've been now down-selected to the final stages here and are now discussing commercial terms dealing. So that's what I can share.

Obviously, we are gaining continued confidence in the OEM as they move towards finalization of the RFQ for this vehicle program, as you mentioned. And obviously, there's many factors that go into the decision, but we are feeling overall good about the progress that we have had with this OEM. And this is lastly the second time that we have done this now, first with Daimler Truck and now with this OEM in the passenger car space.

Suji Desilva (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, great. And would you be able to share, Soroush, if there are other competitors in the down-select or whether it's just you kind of moving into new milestones?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah. So look, what I can say obviously is we are at the final stages of the RFQ and have been multiple down-selects, right, in that. And we think we're in a good position with this passenger OEM.

Suji Desilva (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

That's fair. And then switching over to the Indoor Lab partnership, I'm wondering how does the financial opportunity for that play out as you start to develop, I guess, customers together or a pipeline together?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, absolutely. So we spoke a little bit about this earlier, but in general, obviously, The Indoor Lab partnership is a multi-year production deal that we have with committed volumes. We're starting together really to deploy our technology with 4D LiDAR, as well as their analytics solution across a number of airports, large venues, and mass transit applications. We're starting with JFK airports and San Francisco airports. The overall progress of The Indoor Lab is really to go after a number of different application installations. With the opportunity here that we're talking about with The Indoor Lab, as well as some of our other industrial security applications, we estimate that the revenue potential for this to be approximately in the $50 million range over the next few years. This is the starting point where we see with these opportunities.

And as there is growing interest for the platforms and new sites and applications, we think the potential revenue opportunity here will grow over time. So we don't think by any means there's any kind of a ceiling here, just kind of the first deployment. So hopefully that answers your question.

Suji Desilva (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

No, understood. Thanks, Soroush.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Tyler Anderson (Equity Research Associate)

Hi everyone. This is Tyler Anderson on for Richard Shannon. Thank you for taking my questions. I was wondering if there were any qualitative differences between all of the places that you're looking to get into for indoor and outdoor, and also, what was the pull forward for the shipment about? Is that something that was a technical or a manufacturing matter? Could you describe that a bit for us?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Sure. Yeah. So obviously, with our growing interest for our technology with 4D LiDAR and FMCW, we're expanding our applications and really capitalizing on the growing interest in the market. So I think your question around industrial applications, obviously, besides what we talk about in automotive with Daimler Truck and the passenger vehicle OEMs that we have advanced on, besides this European OEM validation program that we won, we have secured production win with Indoor Lab on the industrial side. But this actually is for indoor and outdoor applications. So it's not just indoor applications. But the key there for them actually has been that they've been looking obviously at different technologies in the space. They've validated different types of technologies and decided that 4D LiDARs were where they're going to go with as they go in terms of production scaling. That's the transition they're making.

Part of the reason is, and I've seen this over and over, is around the advantages of velocity dimension, the advantages of interference immunity, right, not having issues with interference looming, as well as, I think, importantly, our ability to show not just superior capability, but also maturity of our Atlas products, and these were kind of some of the key drivers, especially when you talk about monitoring analytics of different behavior people in different settings inside the airports as well as outside, and to your other question about Atlas and Pullen, this has been obviously a strategic decision that we made earlier in the year. The moment we announced Atlas following the same time with our win with Daimler Truck, we saw a sharp uptick in the interest in the market for our products.

Our team has been working together for the past number of months across engineering as well as manufacturing operations to really pull forward this Atlas deliveries by about six months or so. That's something that has taken a significant amount of effort from the team. In general, of course, with non-automotive applications, we see the ability to pull this forward because often they don't necessarily need some of those automotive qualifications or certifications to be completed yet, which is obviously ongoing and on time for our Daimler Truck SOP. All this, I think, has resulted us in our ability not just to deliver on the existing programs with production programs that we have, but also win additional programs.

What we're going to do here, what we're planning on forward, is continue on capitalizing on this momentum, not just executing on our existing programs, but also converting those additional opportunities to production wins and then those wins to growing shipments and revenue. That's kind of how we've been operating.

Tyler Anderson (Equity Research Associate)

And then are there commonalities between the indoor and outdoor opportunities that you're looking at? Is there a population or a geographical situation that you're looking at when you're entering into a space?

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

You're talking about specific to the industrial sensing, right, Tyler?

Tyler Anderson (Equity Research Associate)

Industrial or mass transit and smart infrastructure.

Soroush Salehian (Co-Founder and CEO)

Sure. Yeah. So first of all, in what we are seeing, the growing interest there in the industrial security, there is across different regions, our first deployment starting in the U.S., obviously with this first national security organization program that we have and now with The Indoor Lab, and these are actually both indoor facing, so some of these, for example, in the terminals with SFO and JFK are looking at inside the terminal, looking for monitoring of people, wrong behavior or bad behavior, tracking analytics, queue times, things like that, so there's a number of different applications. It's monitoring also on the outside, for example, looking at airplanes and on-time docking and undocking, but also there are other applications outdoor for just security monitoring around defenses and perimeters, which are some of the different customers.

From a commonality you're talking about, it's all the same Atlas product that we have been working on that is for automotive that we're providing here for these industrial security applications, be it indoor, be it outdoor, be it for perimeter or mass transit applications. That's some of the, I guess, beauty of kind of the platform that we have built that is highly software configurable and flexible in those applications.

Tyler Anderson (Equity Research Associate)

Thank you. Appreciate your time.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. This does conclude today's program. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time and have a wonderful afternoon.